Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 9464571" data-attributes="member: 75787">Notes: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I am not a lawyer, but have worked with lawyers quite a bit in IP law, but mostly concerned with patent law. My opinions are my own and should not be relied on or treated as any form of authority.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I am happy to be wrong here. It's not like I'm basing anything major on this and I'm more interested in the theory of this process than the actual results.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If anyone with a material interest in my project objects, I'll just stop and delete everything</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Copyright law is not core to the thrust of this thread, so I'm not going to spend a ton of time discussing it in this thread. But it is related!</li> </ul>So although 106 is a good start, I would consider my use of the PDF as a Fair Use. <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107" target="_blank">Section 107</a> is helpful here:"Fair Use" is not something that you can define hard rules about -- it gets argued a lot in courts -- and 107 above shows that by not defining rules, but just saying what factors can be taken into account. Essentially, if you want to definitively know if your use is fair use, you have to go to court. In my case, my reasoning for why I think my use is "fair" as per the code is as follows:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I am making a copy for scholarship and research purposes. Specifically the copy I use is an index on the work allowing it to be combined in new forms.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The purpose is for nonprofit purposes. Not sure if it's "educational". I mean, it educates me, but as a layman that feels a stretch.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The nature of the copyright work is as a reference material, with the expectation that people will want to refer to sections. The work provides an index and so the creation of a better index for research purposes fits within the work's design.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The fact that the entire work is being indexed is a strike against this use.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There is no apparent negative effect on the potential market.</li> </ul>In court cases I have seen reviewed, the courts seem to weight the personal utility of making a copy against the damage to the copyright owner. In my case, given that I am pretty confident there is no damage to the owner, the burden of proof of fair use should be pretty light.As an aside, I should point out that I could actually replicate my system without needing to copy the work. My vector database (the copy) stores text fragments (copies) together with their indexing. Instead I could store references to the fragments and so avoid any copying. It would be a pain though...Anyway, that's my reasoning. Not a lawyer and very aware that "fair use" is used often by bad actors, but I do honestly think my use qualifies. But since this is a matter of opinion rather than clear violation, if you think otherwise, fair enough!</blockquote>

Verification